


hydrangeas and ichor

by orphan_account



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: @author sort out tags, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angel was 18/19 when most of his repressed memories happened, Angel's family hate him, Asexual Character, But also not, Childhood Trauma, Dream Demon, Dream Sex, Drug Use, Familial Abuse, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Possibly future au but its mostly ambiguous, Prostitution, Repressed Memories, Similar plot to the series so far, Slow Burn, Trauma, but in the past, but its not just doom and gloom, god theres so many tags i need to put, its confusing im not explaining it, its hard to describe, that doesnt hate sex necessarily, this is a really emo story, yes i know thats not technically an au but yall'll see, you best bet theres gonna be plenty of fluff too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:34:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Angel lives in a dusty, run down hostel run by his friend’s girlfriend. He pays for his room with the meagre tips he receives from his job at the night club down the road, working the pole. He hasn’t been properly laid in months. It is what it is. His life is not nearly as exciting as he’d hoped it would be.But the new lodger that just moved in down the hall seems determined to turn that upside down, and he’d be lying if he said that didn’t make his boredom seem a whole lot more desirable.
Relationships: Alastor/Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel)
Kudos: 104





	hydrangeas and ichor

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i'm new to the fandom pls be gentle with me ;-;
> 
> i will be updating tags with the more i plan and write, for now thats kind of the basics, and im also really sorry for the ambiguity about the plot, its hard to explain
> 
> hope you enjoy! (also thank [@strawberry-plmp](https://strawberry-plmp.tumblr.com) on tumblr for dragging me into this ship, i guess this is for you <3)

The soft sound of deep vocals runs through his veins as his body winds sensually around the pole between his hands, the beat like a fire that guides his limbs without him even having to think about it. Every now and then, he feels the gentle flutter of notes against his exposed skin, like the careful kisses of a promise of sleep in an actual bed, and his hips falter a little as he thinks ‘what has my life become?’.

Because Angel Dust is not living the life he had hoped he would be.

He takes his time to slide back down the pole, bending over and giving his audience a glimpse at what lies underneath the very short miniskirt he’s wearing, picking his money up and sauntering off into the back rooms with little more than a kiss blown into his adoring crowd.

“Your shift isn’t over yet, Angel,” Cherri reminds him as he begins to undress in their ‘changing room’ (which is actually one of the storage rooms, much too small to actually count as anything more than a cupboard, but they make do), shoving his outfit into his backpack haphazardly before pulling on a pair of skinny jeans and a cropped pink sweatshirt. “Need me to cover?”

He likes that about her; she doesn’t ask any unnecessary questions. “Yes, please, you’re a saint.” He leans in to mess up her carefully mussed hair, pressing a kiss to her cheek before slinging his bag onto his back and laughing as she throws her hairbrush at him, only narrowly escaping the projectile as he slips out of the door and down the hall.

The street outside is dimly lit, the late hour casting shadows on the walls that would’ve made a younger Angel shudder in fear. But now he’s almost comforted by them, a familiar sight in a familiar setting; the night is his domain, and these streets are more like home to him than anywhere else has ever been.

It’s a strange kind of aesthetic; dingy, dark alleyways, people making out for money behind large dustbins, damp pavements shimmering under the lowlight of the streetlamps, glowing faintly orange against the dark purple of the night sky. The wind rips past the mostly decrepit buildings in this part of the city, the sound of sleeping bags rustling coming through broken windows and shattered wooden slats surrounded by caution tape fluttering like ribbon, like eery ghostly tendrils. Hell, the locals call it. And he supposes it is.

There’s a faint glow in the distance, blue and white, like a shining star, and if Angel stands at the foot of the high street, deserted in the night besides the many sleeping shadows that disappear into the crowd come morning, he can see the sparkling buildings of glass and titanium that most people have dubbed Heaven in opposition of their Hell.

It’s not hard to get there. An uphill stroll for about three hours, or a car ride for one, a bus for two. Give or take a few minutes. But you can’t stay there, if you don’t have the money, or the looks, or the right mindset. It’s better now than it used to be when Angel was a child, sure, but he wouldn’t want to go back, even if he could. Where he lives in Hell right now suits him just fine. It’s not ideal, but at least he feels like he  _ belongs _ amongst the lowlifes and the desperate.

He continues walking, taking side streets and small, empty roads to get back home despite the inherent danger of doing such; this has been his route for years and he’s never come into any lasting trouble. Angel learnt from a young age that feeling safe usually meant being vulnerable.

A large building looms in front of him as he crosses another empty road, the ground floor windows emitting a soft light that contradicts the very monolithic and intimidating building they exist upon. A small garden out front sports some very dead, very brown hydrangeas in basic pots, the heads somehow still holding onto the stems by the skin of their teeth. They rustle oddly in the wind, like creepy rattlesnakes.

The large door of the hostel creaks as he pushes it open, the handle rusty under his hand as he turns it. The slightly dusty, damp smell comforts more than repulses him, and he sighs as the door shuts behind him with a soft bang. He’s home.

“Angel, you’re late,” a perky voice announces as Charlie rushes towards him from the kitchen, stopping just in front of him and smiling awkwardly. “Did you not manage to get the time off?”

He checks the time on his phone, and sure enough, he’s late for dinner by ten minutes. "It's ten minutes, Charlie, it's hardly like I missed it completely," he sounds tired, even to himself, like he should sleep for a year. "Besides, you can just put some food on a plate and put it in the microwave for me."

The shorter blonde shakes her head and points to the clock on the wall, the time actually a lot later than his phone says. "You missed curfew by five minutes. Dinner was an hour and a half ago. You promised Vaggie you'd try harder."

"I have to earn money somehow, would you rather I go back to whoring myself out? I can fit my work hours around you both then." He snaps, ignoring the flash of guilt rising up through his throat at the hurt expression on the other's face, entering his phone settings to figure out why it was running behind.

"You know we don't want that, Angel," Charlie puts a hand on his arm consolingly, leading him to the kitchen and turning the microwave on to heat up his dinner. "But there are rules to you being able to live here, you know that."

"Yeah yeah, gotta keep clean and not come home late or else I lose my lodging privileges, I know," the bar stool at the breakfast bar squeaks as he sits on it, resting his head on his hands. "Can't we just extend the curfew a little longer? My boss keeps giving me the late shifts and I can't keep getting Cherri to cover for me."

Charlie narrows her eyes minutely before nodding, the both of them falling silent as the microwave hums before it pings and she takes his plate out and sets it in front of him. "I'll talk to Vaggie, but I can't guarantee anything. But it should be fine, seeing as we can't do anything about your boss."

"Thank you." Angel smiles as gratefully as he can manage, beginning to eat as quickly as he can despite the heat. Charlie leaves him alone to finish his dinner, and he's left with his thoughts.

He understands their need for him to be on his best behaviour; after all, Charlie's livelihood hangs on the line with this hostel, and Vaggie was the one who offered the room to him in the first place. If he were to get into trouble, and be found out, then it'll reflect badly on two of the three women who have showed the most kindness to him in his life. And he may not be a paragon of 'good person', and he may also not be a decent person, but he isn't the worst person ever.

Well, he also needs the room or he'll be on the streets again, so it's obviously not selfless, but still. Gotta count for something.

So in the spirit of best behaviour, Angel cleans up his dishes once he's done with them, putting them back in the correct cupboards and turns off all the switches before waltzing up to the first floor where his room is.

The bed isn't the most comfortable, and the light from Heaven leaks in through the tears in the curtain, but he has a roof over his head (even if it does creak like a boat in a rocky sea), and much like everything in his life at this moment, it's better than nothing. Much, much better.

Exhausted from working the pole for what feels like weeks non-stop, he immediately changes into some fluffy pink pyjamas and crawls under the duvet cover, falling fast asleep within minutes.

* * *

_ "Daddy?" He sounds scared, even to his own ears, shadows creeping up on him from all corners, grinning with sharp yellow teeth and red, red eyes. "Daddy?!"  _

_ "Shut up, you useless whore," a voice growls from behind him, and suddenly everything is too bright, too sudden, like a flash of pain across his eyes. "Daddy isn't here to save you." _

_ "Not that he'd want to," another voice, more familiar, hums from far away, distant, like the sound is travelling through water. "No one would want to save a useless roach like you." _

_ The shadows return, laughing and grinning and crackling like static, garbled and suffocating. They call his name, clawed fingers dancing along the wooden floor of his childhood bedroom, scraping and clacking and dragging their way up his bedposts and- _

_ A sharp pain across his face, followed by a harsh scream and the shatter of a plate, gunshots, hot liquid spraying across his face and- _

_ Cold, the soles of his feet torn up, crying, no one's coming, no one's coming, no one- _

_ Shadows with sharp teeth and red eyes and long claws and a bloody tongue and a voice like a radio and somehow he doesn't hate it but he wa- _

Wakes up, heart racing and palms sweaty, sick to his stomach. "No no no no no," he mutters to himself, sitting up as quickly as he can and running to his en suite, throwing up in the toilet as memories of his past roil in the inky blackness of his sleep addled brain. The acid feels like it's burning his throat, but at least he'd had dinner so it wasn't just bile and lining. "Ugh, what the fuck."

It's been months since his last nightmare like that, and even then it didn't pull up all the memories quite like those ones. At least he didn't wake up screaming.

He washes his hands and dries his eyes, ignoring how  _ shit _ he looks when he meets his own eyes in the mirror. "Pull yourself together, Angel. You left that shitty life behind ages ago."

There's an itching in his veins and at the back of his throat, aching for the sweet release of getting high or drunk and forgetting his name. But he can't, not if he wants to keep his room and stop Charlie and Vaggie from worrying about him unnecessarily. Still, the small stash of PCP he keeps for emergencies calls out to him from behind the broken radiator next to his bed.

"Fuck." Resting his head on the mirror, Angel takes a deep breath, forcing the memories of his childhood trauma back down to the deep recesses of his repression. He is  _ not _ willing to open Pandora's box today, nor any day ever.

Applying some quick mascara and concealer under his eyes so he doesn't look like as much of a trainwreck as he feels, throwing on his clothes from the night before (ignoring the fact that they smell of fags and booze) before he puts on a smile and waltzes out of his room.

"Good morning, sugar tits," he announces as he slides down the last few inches of banister, landing gracefully on his feet and slinging an arm around Vaggie's shoulders. "Sleep well?"

"Shut up, long legs," she grumbles, jabbing him sharply in the ribs with a glare. "You're not yet out of trouble, and if you push me, I'll be the one to give it to you."

He shrugs, moving away and not letting the pain in his ribs show on his face. "Whatever you say sweetheart."

She growls at him, but lets him go into the kitchen without any fuss. He pours himself a bowl of chocolate cereal and milk, ignoring some of the other patrons of the hostel giving him shady looks; he's more used to judging stares than anyone should be. "See anything ya like, fellas?" He winks at the two men, cocking a hip to the side and licking his lips in a sultry manner before laughing and taking his breakfast back out into the lobby.

The TV shows the news, some murderer's most recent kill hitting too close to Heaven for the mayor's liking, so it finally seems to be hitting regional news. The anchor, a tall and thin woman with a seemingly bad temper, takes a moment to describe the scene with brutal accuracy, down to every gory detail, and Angel wonders if she's even supposed to go into that much detail. It seems like a pretty bad scene, but he's seen worse. Much worse, especially down in the worst parts of Hell. But those cases never get reported on.

"Just terrible, isn't it?" Charlie hums from the stairs, watching with morbid fascination as a picture of the crime scene fills the screen. "Who could do something like that?"

"Well, judging by the cleanliness of the scene, someone who has done it many times before," Angel answers without really thinking about it, shovelling more of his food into his mouth and chewing contentedly until she doesn't answer. He meets her eyes and finds a question in them that he doesn't like, so he shrugs and looks back to the telly. "Maybe."

She opens her mouth to say something else, probably to pester him about what he knows about murder, but there comes three loud knocks at the front door, and it shocks them both out of their conversation.

"A new lodger?" He asks, following her to the door after setting his breakfast down on the side table in the hallway. 

"Maybe," she agrees, opening the door and stepping back a little. "Welcome, can I help you?"

"If you would, my dear. I am looking for a place to stay, and I must say, I was drawn to this… Establishment of yours rather strongly," a tall gentleman stands in front of them both, a suitcase in one hand and a cane in the other, a long red tail coat over a dark brown waistcoat and pinstriped red trousers, looking like he'd stepped straight out of a time machine from the 1930's, voice oddly fitting of that assumption. "I'm Alastor-"

A wide smile stretches on his face as he holds out a hand to shake to Charlie, teeth looking almost sharp and yellow in the low light of the hostel wall sconces, but his eyes lock onto Angel with an intensity that almost scares him, and a revelation that terrifies him.

_ -sharp, yellow teeth split wide in a grin and red, red eyes glow from the darkness, a voice that sounds like a 1930's radio broadcaster fills his ears, claws scraping against his wooden floor- _

His demon.

"-It's a pleasure to meet you."

**Author's Note:**

> sorry angel
> 
> on tumblr [@strawberry-whore](https://strawberry-whore.tumblr.com)! sorry for the self promo ^^;


End file.
